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The German Synodal Path

Colm Holmes • 14 May 2022

Legally the votes of the Synodal Path are not binding - but morally they are!



Dr Johanna Rahner & Dr Sabine Schratz OP

(lecture in Lumen Institute, Dublin, on 11 May 2022)

 

 

Johanna Rahner:

1.   Legally the votes of the Synodal Path are not binding - but morally they are!

2.   She is not optimistic about the outcome; the Vatican is very rigid regarding structures.

3.   At the same time she also believes that the Synodal Path may prove to be the most important implementation of Vatican 2

4.   Asked what happens if the Vatican says No? She replied there is no exit strategy.




 

The Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK)  was founded in 1848. Today there are 20 million Catholics in Germany of which 6 million are members of the ZdK. The ZdK is made up of 117 Catholic Associations (The Catholic Women’s Association alone has 400,000 members). Sabine stressed these 3 features:

1.    Church tax is collected by the state (8% of income tax) and amounts to over €6 billion per year.

2.    Strong institutions https://www.zdk.de/organisation/agkod/verbaende/

3.    The different religions each have their own faculties in German universities

 

The Synodal Path was launched after the MHG study (commissioned by the German bishops) in 2018 revealed 1,670 clerics credibly accused of abusing 3,677 children from 1946 to 2014. The MHG study identified several systemic causes which facilitated this abuse: Negative attitudes towards LGBTQ people; compulsory celibacy; immaturity of seminarians; inadequate training of seminarians. Sexual abuse was seen as an abuse of power.

 

Th MHG study led the German bishops to set up the German Synodal Path as a binding process together with the ZdK in order to establish a listening church. The Synodal Path includes 4 forums, each jointly chaired by a bishop and a ZdK representative:

1.    Power

2.    Sexuality

3.    Priesthood

4.    Women

 

The Synodal Path Assembly is made up of 230 members, a balance of lay and clerics. In order for resolutions to be approved they must meet two criteria:

·      Approval by two-thirds of full assembly (lay & clerics)

·      Approval of two-thirds of the bishops voting on their own

 

The Vatican’s Cardinal Ouellet wrote to Cardinal Marx in September 2019 criticising the German Synodal Path for two main reasons:

1.    The binding nature of the Synodal Path: Rome reserves all final decisions to itself

2.    The blurring of lines of authority with lay as well as clergy involved

 

The reply to Cardinal Ouellet confirmed that resolutions could only be implemented by the bishops and the Holy See. And the people of God are entitled to be involved in decision making.

 

All debates at the Synodal Path are in public and available online. Likewise all documents (Basic texts and Action texts) are available online, including in English https://www.synodalerweg.de/english

Due to Covid the Synodal Path has been extended and the final meeting will now be in March 2023.

 

Canon Law is not supportive of democracy. Canon Law seeks to limit theological thinking. The Curia supports both these positions. But because of both of these positions Canon Law needs to change.

 

Critics of the German Synodal Path have accused it of:

·     Schism

·     Confusing the faithful

·     Destroying the church

·     Flouting tradition by following the Zeitgeist

 

But it is Pope Francis who has encouraged discussion of taboo subjects and listening to those on the periphery. The risk of schism is real: but only if we do NOT discuss these issues! Cardinal Marx has said that the Church teaching on LGBTQ people needs to change. Yet the CDF letter on February 2021 banned blessings of same sex couples. Timothy Radcliffe in “What’s the point in being a Christian?” called for the need for open spaces to discuss and argue. This is what the German Synodal path is providing.

 

Hopefully The Irish Synodal Pathway in 2026 will follow the model of the German Synodal Path!

 

 

Colm Holmes

 

 

 

Dr Sabine Schratz OP studied Theology and History at the University of Münster and St Patrick’s College Maynooth. At p[resent, she is the Director of Lumens Dominican Centre in Blackrock and member of the Dominican Historical Institute, Rome. Dr Schratz has published in the fields of Church history, social justice and liturgical praxis.

 

Dr Johanna Rahner succeeded Hans Küng as Professor of Dogmatics, History of Dogma and Ecumenical Theology at the Catholic Theological Faculty of Tübingen University. She is one of the most renowned theologians in Germany and an expert on the reform movement. Dr Rahner has published widely in academia and appears regularly in the media to comment on current Church and faith issues.


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A reflection by Soline Humbert for the Women’s Ordination Conference Retreat “Hidden Springs, Holy Radiance” 9 February 2025 [ see recording on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szP5h1kzEsU ] We have been gathering over the past three days in the presence of Brigid of Kildare, and I am sure she has brought gifts to each one, for my experience is that she is attentive to our needs and very generous with her help. At this stage I just want to share some of my own life journey with Brigid. I first encountered her in 1969 when I came from France to Ireland as a child on holidays to learn English. I went to a small Irish town called Tullow. As it happens it was in Tullow that on the first of February 1807 the order of nuns of St Brigid which had been dissolved at the Reformation, had been refounded by a far-sighted bishop. Symbolically an oak sapling had been brought from Kildare Town, from the church of the oak, to Tullow and planted in the grounds of the Brigidine convent where I took English classes. It was by then a majestic oak tree. It still stands to this day. Coincidentally and somewhat ironically, 1969 was also the year that Pope Paul the 6th removed St Brigid, along with 193 other saints, from the Universal Roman Calendar of saints. The reason being that there wasn’t enough evidence for her existence! That despite the fact she was the most mentioned Irish person in the writings of several centuries after her death... What was true was that her flame had been somehow extinguished, and her importance diminished in a deeply clericalised and patriarchal church as Ireland was at the time. She was in the shadow of St Patrick and very much the secondary patron Saint, reflecting the secondary position of women in general. But change was slowly happening. Having discovered in myself a vocation to the priesthood I eventually co- founded a group for women’s ordination and launched a petition to open all ministries to women in February 1993. At the very same time, which I consider providential, the flame of St Brigid was rekindled by the Brigidine sisters in Kildare Town. Women were stirring after a very long wintertime in the church and in society and becoming more fiery. Brigid with her torch was blazing a way for equality. It is then, and only then, that I came across the story of her ordination as a bishop and I remember my astonishment for I had never read anything like that before, or since, for that matter. Of course, while this fact was mentioned in many of the lives of Brigid going back to the first millennium it had been quietly left out of the pious descriptions of her life which were fed to the people. The way the story is recounted makes it clear that her ordination was considered to be very much the doing of the Holy Spirit. Objections about her gender were voiced but powerless to negate what God had done. It reminds me very much of the passage in the Acts of the Apostles when St Peter is amazed to discover that the Holy Spirit has descended on Cornelius, a gentile, and which leads him to conclude that “God has no favourites”. Brigid’s episcopal ordination at the hands of a bishop overcome by the Spirit is also a powerful affirmation that when it comes to ordination God has no favourite gender. Her ordination’s divine origin shows that Brigid was a bishop because God ordained it, and her. A very subversive truth our Church has yet to learn... As we campaigned for women’s ordination we made sure that this episode from Brigid’s life was brought into the open, again and again, despite clerical efforts to dismiss this dangerous historical memory as pure legend and keep it buried. Interestingly when the Anglican Church of Ireland, (Episcopalian) ordained their first woman bishop in 2013 it was to the diocese of Meath and Kildare! A very symbolic act. I have often gone to St Brigid’s Well in Kildare, a little oasis of peace, to spend some time with Brigid and re-source myself by the gently flowing water. After the First Women’s Ordination Worldwide Dublin international Conference in 2001 I went there again on the anniversary of my baptism and I hung my purple stole on a tree overlooking the well. I had worn that stole for many years as a sign of waiting. From now on I would wear stoles of other colours. And a few years ago, I found myself back in Tullow, as a guest speaker at the invitation of the Brigidine sisters for an international celebration. It was very moving to be able to speak of my calling to priesthood in the place where the order of St Brigid had been revived and where I had first come as a child half a century beforehand! 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